


a home we chose

by mumblingmaria



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Acceptance, Gen, Kanan is from Lothal, Mourning, Post Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:41:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblingmaria/pseuds/mumblingmaria
Summary: A decade after liberating Lothal, Ezra comes and goes from his home world. There's a whole galaxy out there to learn from, to protect, to live in. But he always returns home, how could he not after everything he did to save it. This time, his return home offers a revelation about who was from here and just what that meant.





	a home we chose

He never got tired of returning to Lothal. He knew he never would. Ezra walked through the streets of Capital City and wore the easy smile he always did when he got back to his home planet. He took the lesser trekked paths, not wanting to draw attention to himself. Though as the few years passed since his return home, less people would stop him in the streets and thank him. “ _For everything you did, Ezra. Thank you._ ” He still tried to avoid going to crowded places when he was here alone. In groups, he could divert attention elsewhere, share it amongst those who understood where he was now. 

“ _Thank you, Ezra._ ”

The apartment he lived in when he was planetside was small. He’d shake his head when he’d catch himself thinking about how his old tower overall had way more space. He didn’t really need that now. He didn’t stay here often enough to need more than the bare minimum. Sabine would argue that it was his Jedi training talking. He would argue that he was just a practical person, finally. Everyone would then laugh. 

Dropping his travel bag on the bed, Ezra wandered over to the main window. He could just make out the edge of the inland sea that Capital City was built next to, now bathed in the warm glow of the slowly setting sun. The fishing industry was finally getting a foothold again in the city, there were boats out on the water everyday now. He could make out a sailboat gliding across the water, most likely heading into shore. 

A decade had passed since the Empire had been removed from Lothal. Every single moment since he had left the planet had been worth knowing his home was free and had been waiting there for him to return to.

A _ping_ from his comlink made him jump. Ezra turned to look at his bag. Who would be trying to contact him. Sabine, Hera, and Zeb knew that he had gone back to Lothal but no one on the planet should know he was here yet. He had only touched down an hour ago. Gingerly, he walked over and rummaged around in the bag until he found the device.

“Hello?”

“ _Good to have you back on Lothal, son._ ”

“Ryder! Wait, how did you know I was back?” Ezra asked, grinning out into his room. 

“ _I’m the governor, Ezra. I know people who work at the spaceport,_ ” Ryder answered, a deep chuckle following his words. The man sounded older, it was always a surprise every time they spoke. 

“Right.” _I always forget how quick news travels here,_ he thought. He moved back to the window, leaning out to watch the city. “It’s good to hear from you.”

“ _Come by my office. There’s… I have something I think you should see._ ” And with that, the comm went dead. 

Ezra glanced down at it before looking back out at the city. This was new. Ryder never called on him. Ryder would normally wait for him to make the first move, understanding his desire to adjust to his returns. 

“It must be important, whatever it is,” he muttered. 

The walk to Ryder’s office took awhile. Or, rather, the route Ezra took to get there wasn’t the shortest. It was a far more complicated route, twists and turns throughout the city, but it kept his mind at ease. He wasn’t avoiding anything, he just wasn’t up for inviting memories that he had let go of back. Though, with how much the city had changed and grown, many of those memories were gone, truly just memories. (Except for the memorials, the first time he saw them he had said they were wonderful, which he honestly felt but it was later when he admitted that he had trouble looking at them.)

He could remember the first time he saw the city this alive and bright. It was a glimpse of the past and future merged into one, a hand had guided him through that moment, helped him understand what it all had meant. A now gone but ever present guide. 

“It’s good to see you, son,” Ryder said once he had arrived in the office, clasping hands. 

“Likewise.” Ezra grinned up at him. 

The governor moved around to the other side of his desk, though he didn’t sit down. Ryder tapped a finger against a data-tape. “Where were you this time? Visiting family, travel?”

“I was with Hera and Jacen for awhile,” he answered. He moved to the desk as well and plopped down into the chair in front of it. He knew what Ryder was going, Ezra was aware of stalling when he heard it. He was used to when those older than him stalled. Though, generally it had been because he had asked some impossible question, never when he was the one called for whatever this was. “But then I was travelling. I’m honestly not even going to be here long, I just wanted to stop by. I felt like I needed to.” He shrugged. It was easy to just follow these feelings now.

Ryder frowned but nodded nonetheless. A final tap on the tape before he picked it up. “We’ve been searching through old city archives to try and piece together as much the history as we can. The Empire had done a lot of damage, but we’re getting there. It’s taking longer than I’d care to admit. But, while we were working, we came across this.” Putting the data-tape down in front of Ezra, he then reached so a datapad. Ezra eyed the data-tape but didn’t reach for it. Ryder continued, “It has a list of families from Capital City, from the past and from now. Bridger was there, Azadi, even Kell. All the names you would expect us to find.”

He tapped the screen of the datapad a few times before handing that over to Ezra as well. “We also found this.”

Starting for the device held out to him, Ezra’s fingertips brushed against its edge. He didn’t take hold of it yet. There was an energy around it that he couldn’t explain. 

“Ezra,” Ryder said softly. He looked up and found a warm yet concerned face looking down at him. There were more lines on it now, the past decade was finally catching up.

Gingerly, he took the datapad. Turning it around, he read the list of family names presented to him. _Dewan, Dorvin, Drenall, Droma, Dume, Duval…_ Ezra’s eyes widened and shot up back to Ryder. The look on his face hadn’t changed, if only having grown in concern for him. Reading the list over again, Ezra stammered, “I… I don’t understand. What does… How?”

The datapad fell into his lap. Suddenly, holding it was too much to bear. Ryder sat down on his side of the desk and stroked his beard. “I contacted Hera, to make sure I was remembering correctly. The data-tape has all of this, but there was a family that used to live here in the city with the name Dume.” 

“He never said anything about this…” Ezra whispered. He leaned forward, resting his head in one of his hands. “Why wouldn’t he have had said something?”

“I don’t think he knew, Ezra,” Ryder replied. “From what Hera told me, the Jedi didn’t tell their disciples where they derived from. And I don’t think it ever occurred to him to find out.” 

Ezra kept his head down, his eyes tightly shut. He couldn’t look at the names in his lap. He couldn’t look up at Ryder. “His family… are they still here?”

“No. By the time he was born, only his parents were living on the planet. What happened to them after he left is harder to say. Most likely they passed away before he ever came back to Lothal,” Ryder explained. He sighed and the sound of his chair’s faint groaning filled the office. “They’re gone now.”

_They’re all gone now._

It wasn’t until he had stopped walking that Ezra realized that the path he had taken from Ryder’s office wasn’t leading him home. It was leading him here.

The weight of the data-tape in his jacket’s pocket had kept his attention as he had travelled through the city. If anyone had tried to speak with him, he wouldn’t have noticed. The now familiar streets were foreign to him again. 

Ezra missed the city he had grown up in. 

The memorial wasn’t crowded, for once. In fact, no one was standing there. While it was generally quiet here in the evenings, but Ezra had never seen it empty. 

It was small, nothing grand. A stone obelisk, tall enough to be noticed but not to stand out. Aside from the green detailing Sabine had painted there years ago, it was just stone. No holos projected on it, only one small light was shining on the front so those who came by at night and wanted to read the inscription on the stone. It was simple. It was everything it should be.

Ezra didn’t move in close. He didn’t need to, he knew the words there by heart now. _The right path isn’t always the easiest. Kanan Jarrus - A Friend, A Teacher, A Jedi_. He carried them with him wherever he went. 

A sound behind him made Ezra turn. He smiled. A loth-cat trotted out of the shadows. It walked up to him, brushed against his leg, and made its way towards the obelisk. He watched it climb up the lip around the memorial’s base, pace for a moment before laying down. It watched him in return now. Loth-cats had made themselves comfortable in the city, it wasn’t uncommon to see one or two running around. 

He walked up to the obelisk and bent down to pet the animal. It began to purr, closing its eyes in content. Ezra glanced up at the memorial before standing up straight. He brushed his hand against it. Turning away, he headed off in the direction of his apartment.

Placing his plate of food down on the table, Ezra pulled out the data-tape from his pocket. He tapped it against the table. Glancing around the small multipurpose room, he wondered where his datapad was. The search around the apartment took longer than he’d have liked—maybe he didn’t stay here as much as he could—his food was getting cold when he sat down finally. Chewing the now less than satisfactory meal, Ezra hooked up the datapad to the data-tape.

He was finishing up his food when the datapad let him know the transfer was complete. His stomach dropped. The plate went to the kitchenette, a glass of water drunk, tidying up the nonexistent clutter around. Ezra wandered through his living place. But soon it was clear that he couldn’t pretend there were ways to busy himself. He sat back down at the table and grabbed the datapad.

Ryder had placed only the information about the Dume family on the tape. They were an older family from Lothal, though slowly over time it grew smaller and smaller. Saul and Anna Dume, parents to Caleb Dume. As Ryder had said earlier, there was no record of what had happened to them as there was about the older members of the family. Whether or not they were alive when the Republic fell was unknowable. 

Ezra leaned back in his chair, staring blankly ahead of him. Did they know about the Jedi falling? Would they have assumed their son had die in the coup or would they have held out hope he had survived against all the odds? If they were out there in the galaxy right now, did they know that it was the Jedi who had saved it? Would they ever have the chance to know what their son did?

Looking down at the datapad again, Ezra continued his exploration of a past that had almost been lost. He brushed a tear that slid down his cheek. It was all here, the remnants of a life neither one of them had lived. He breath got caught in his throat when he read where they had lived, blocks away from his own childhood home. Would they have met if this had been a galaxy without Jedi? Would their parents had known each other? Did they anyway? Would they have just been strangers, occasionally passing in the street? 

Setting the datapad down, Ezra stood and walked over to the window. The city was dark at night even with the streetlights. You could see all of the stars in the sky. 

Lothal was free. It was alive. It had taken only a few years for the planet to start thriving again; by the time he had gotten home to it there were blue skies again, something he never thought to wish for. They had given Lothal the second chance it more than deserved.

But Lothal had given them both a second chance. They were both lost for so many years, stranded in what seemed to be the only life to possibly live with. Barely living but somehow making it to the next day. And then it let them find each other. Ezra had come to believe that they had been meant to find each other. The Force had connected them, bringing them together. He had never really thought there had been much significance to them meeting here on Lothal, it just happened to be the planet Ezra had been living on. Knowing now that it was both of their birthplaces and had become a home for all their family only confirmed that feeling.

They were meant to find each other. Meant to save this planet. The galaxy had needed them to meet, to become master and apprentice. To become a family. 

Ezra watched a trio of loth-bats fly overhead, headed towards wherever there was food for them. They circled once before disappearing into the still darkening sky. 

Yes, they were meant to find each other but they had chosen to be together. They had chosen to work together and fight together and learn together. It was their choice to make Lothal their home. It was their choice to fight for it. To save it. 

Ten years had passed. The memories were the foundation of this city. The world left behind made every painful day worth it. Worth the sacrifices made. 

Kanan was gone. It still hurt some days, it still wasn’t always easy to accept. But the choices he had made were right. He had gotten the chance to save the home he chose and the home that chose him.

Ezra believed that they had been meant to be Jedi, and to be Jedi together. 

He walked back to the datapad and shut it off. It was dark in the room. Ezra could hear Sabine laughing at him and saying that he was done with the days of sitting in the dark thinking of the past. If Hera were here, she’d turn on the lights and tell him he was going to hurt his eyes. Zeb would exaggerate a hiss once they were on, claiming Hera was trying to blind him. Everyone would start to laugh. He smiled as he flicked the lights on.

**Author's Note:**

> When I first heard this was a theory about Kanan, I'll be honest, I didn't like it. A lot of what I saw around it was about how this was why Kanan and Ezra were special, this was why they were good together, as well as a number of other thing negating the bond the two of them worked on outside of fate/destiny. Now I think there's something truly moving about the idea. Not because both of them being from Lothal makes them who they are and who they are together, but because it strengthens that they chose to call Lothal their home and chose to save it. 
> 
> I think the idea of Kanan being from Lothal is bittersweet. I think Ezra would find comfort in it after the initial shock. 
> 
> This is probably the last thing I'll write that's post the series. It's hard to write about Kanan's death, and honestly in this and my other fic I definitely dance around it. I'm totally dealing with it. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this.


End file.
